


Retribution (Repentance)

by ScratchTheMaven



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: F/M, Gen, other characters mentioned in passing, two part story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 10:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScratchTheMaven/pseuds/ScratchTheMaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been painful.  Nothing was more of an obvious statement than that.  It had been painful, but over the past three years he’d learned to live without Natasha.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Retribution

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post-WS #14. 
> 
> I debated forever making this little ficlet a "fixit" or just an emotion-inducer, so I decided to make the first chapter the original ending and the second chapter the extended "fixit" ending. So, according to your reading preferences, you get to choose your own ending.

It had been painful.  Nothing was more of an obvious statement than that.  It had been painful, but over the past three years he’d learned to live without Natasha. 

 

At the start, something about that had been terrifying to him; going it alone.  He wasn't new to the concept, had opted for solitude when it felt as if the walls would cave in on him, the dead _press_ of lurid memories, all at once and too much. Had chosen off-grid isolation in the months that followed what had happened, stirring up demons as if begging for one of them to put him out of his misery (they hadn't). But it was different, somehow, this - to be alone against his will. The loss was a prominent and agonizing as a severed limb. So when he thought back throughout his years, he realized he’s never actually done things on his own, not like he had been lately.  Maybe it was no big surprise to think that even during those decades he refuses to talk about (those years of cold, cunning, brutal efficiency), when he  _did_  have someone, something in him became more human. There had always been Steve, or Toro, or Sam, or Natasha.  

 

And there still _was_. Steve, who was more than willing to go out of his way (when was he never?) to help him, or even just to stop by some night unannounced (because their dynamic had expanded beyond asking far long ago) to catch-up with a beer when the lives they led had kept them apart for weeks and _months_.  There was Sam, who Bucky had gotten an earful from (and a sharp bite from Redwing) for not telling him sooner that he was alive.  Clint was an occasional familiar face, with Bucky was practically working underground and Clint juggling both Avengers’ duties and his own personal gunslinger (arrowslinger?) act, they didn't get to talk as much as they used to.  

 

Then there was Natasha.

 

It was an occasional partnership, one that hadn’t reformed as smoothly as Bucky would have liked.  He couldn’t exactly say he didn’t deserve her reaction to the news of what he’d done - or hadn’t done.  The night after he’d made the decision to call it quits on having SHIELD try to repair her brain any further, he’d laid awake hours on end wondering if he’d made the right call.  And while his gut instinct told him that yes, he had (hadn’t he?), all he could think of was how Natasha always referred to his ‘gut instinct’ as his idiocy.  The sinking feeling that he’d made the wrong decision left him sleepless for days.

 

It had been their seventh mission together since Novokov had torn their lives apart, six months into working together, and Bucky had been waiting for Natasha to meet with him in a rundown warehouse so they could go over the layout of the engineering facility they would be breaking into.  They were originally supposed to meet a block away from the corporate headquarters of the company, but Fury had contacted him twenty minutes ago with the news that the CEO was planning to launch a global computer virus  _tonight_.  Briefly he'd wondered why Fury hadn’t contacted Stark - after all, this sort of thing was more his area of expertise, but Bucky supposed that Fury didn’t entirely trust Stark these days (hadn’t for years), especially not in front of high-grade computer tech SHIELD wanted their hands on that he could possibly reverse engineer.  Regardless, the last minute intel had led to a change of location as well as an increase in threat to civilian lives, and had left Bucky hoping Natasha had gotten wind of it.

 

She had.

 

She had also gotten wind of something else.

 

Months into working with her again and it was obvious she _knew_ there was a gap in her memories; something that extensive was hard  _not_  to notice. Years gone. The war between the heroes.  Gone. SHIELD's era of _Director Stark_. Gone. The Skrulls invasion. Gone. Norman Osborn's takeover of SHIELD, the birth of HAMMER, his Avengers. _All gone_. When their easy laughter had died or the night gave way to holing up in some last-minute hotel or when they sat in briefing rooms, sometimes he'd catch her looking at him. So maybe someone had said something or maybe something just _clicked_ one day, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that she _knew_.

 

_**“You**_ ,” she hissed through gritted teeth, the lingering sting of an anticipated backhand smarting the side of Bucky’s face.  “You unbelievable  _fool_.  How  **could**  you?  No,  **how dare you**?” 

“’Tasha, I—” 

“No.  You don't get to call me that,” she snarled, pacing the room in front of him, a predator about to pounce.  He grimaced, but fell silent. 

After a moment, Natasha stopped pacing to stand in front of him, arm crossed, fixing him with a narrow-eyed stare.  “So,” she began, a smirk (bitter and acrid like smoke) turning the corner of her mouth, “I hear we know each other rather well.” 

Speaking seemed dangerous - deadly. He could only nod. 

“You didn’t think to bother telling me this?” she asked. 

He caught her eye, briefly noting the evaluating stare she had him under. “It’s complicated.” 

“Complicated,” she deadpanned. 

“Yes…complica—” 

“—I’ve had things kept and hidden from me my whole life,” she seethed, teeth bared in a rage Bucky knew well.  Her voice made him recoil - the living recognition of every self-doubt he’d had over his decision made vocal.  He knew her well enough to know that she rarely lost her composure over things like this, some ingrained coping mechanism or tactic picked up from years of training (and oh, they'd been trained well) that had bled over into her natural behavior - to remain calm, to emotionally shut down, to be _other_.  He knew because she only let those walls down around those she cared for or trusted enough to let them see that composure collapse into ruin.  How fitting that she didn’t know him at all anymore.  “Important,  **vital**  things locked away or twisted into  **lies**  and you thought this was  **okay**?  Do you even know what that’s like?!” 

“Yes, Natasha, I do!” he shouted.  “You kn—” 

_You know that I do._

Those words were no longer true. 

Neither said a word, minutes stretched thin and worn. 

“I know why you did it, James,” she said.  Her tone was hushed, anger still palpable beneath the quiet, but her eyes reflected a certain kind of softness that Bucky could bear to look at.  “I…”  She ran a hand through her hair as she let out a frustrated sigh.  “I even understand  **why**  you did it...but I would have kept fighting for you.” 

She might as well have kicked him in the chest.  Shattered sternum piercing the hollow, blood-pumping muscle beneath. Because he knew it was true.  Because he knew he deserved to hear those words.  Deserved to have every misgiving about his decision confirmed.  No.  Not just deserved.  _Needed_.  He needed this.  He needed it. 

The silence between them was thick, heavy like an after-storm snow weighing down the thin, weak branches of some too-old tree long overdue to collapse onto the forest floor.  Bucky cleared his throat (had to - anything for a sound, anything other than the stagnant quiet and her rage).  “We…” – he winced at the word – “we should go.  We have work to do.” 

Natasha narrowed her eyes at him, looking for a second as if anger would overrule duty, before she nodded curtly and walked out of the building, stopping only to look over her shoulder to say, “It would be nice to recall something to reconcile this with…but seeing as I can’t….” 

He lingered in the warehouse like a specter haunting the place it had been laid to rest, several seconds that felt more like several years (after all, he of all people knew that time was a funny thing, that time didn’t often make sense), letting himself believe that there would be no forgiveness for what he’d done (no, what he **hadn’t**  done). 

And after their mission was finished, after the debriefing and after Natasha sent him one last glare, he  ~~told himself~~  realized he didn’t want her forgiveness. 

He wanted her retribution. 

Because there was no going back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_How **can**  you?_  she’d wanted to ask.   _How **can**  you dare?_

But no.  She’d had a cover to keep.  A cover she  _wanted_  to keep.  She wanted – needed – him to realize she wasn’t his be-all and end-all.

(instead she directed those questions inward - she never claimed to lack cruelty)

She  _had_  been angry.  It had only been several hours after Steve had come to her with a solution to fix the gap in her memories (memories that nagged at her in their absence - a dangerous lack, a spy without her memories), only hours after he'd sat her down to explain the gist of what those memories were, months after he’d asked her if she even wanted them to try to repair them begin with.  When he told her, when he’d brought in Rogue, Doctor Strange, and Charles Xavier and had them work together to fill in those blank spaces in her mind  _("I understand Strange and Xavier,” Natasha said when Steve brought up the idea,_   _“but why Rogue?”…“Well, you know, Rogue can absorb the memories of those she touches, and you two—”…“Oh, right.  That.”)_ , it made sense why Barnes (no, not Barnes, not Bucky,  _James_ ) was so distant, almost skittish, towards her on the few missions Fury had sent them on.  It made sense why he avoided holding eye contact, why he kept conversation clipped, why he was strictly business, why he sometimes looked at her with a near impenetrable sadness that she didn't understand.

 

_“…Why you?” she asked after hours of mental rebuilding and replacing, raising an eyebrow at Steve.  “Why did you push so hard to fix this?  I was under the impression that aside from living up to every good old-fashioned American sentiment you can think of, you live by a strict ‘Bucky first’ motto.”_

_The corner of Steve’s mouth twitched, the flicker of a smile.  “He won’t suspect me,” he said simply, shrugging a shoulder._

_“Huh.  So Captain America plays dirty?” she asked with an amused grin._

_“I’ve learned the hard way that sometimes…you have to...if it's worth it,” Steve said, his voice verging on solemn.  “Besides…it should have been your call in the first place.”_

_Natasha reached out to lightly squeeze his hand.  “Thank you,” she said, trying to put every ounce of sincerity she could into the words._

_Steve gave a lazy, dismissive roll of his shoulder.  “You don’t need to thank me.  I’d do it a hundred times over if I had to.  Not to say I ever **want**  to have to do it again…but....”  Natasha nodded as the blond fell silent for a moment.  “So what are you going to do?”_

_“What do you think I should do?” she asked, curious._

_She watched Steve bite at the inside of his lip as he thought.  “I think you should do whatever you think is right.”_

_How typical. She tilted her head _just_ to the side as she asked, “And how do you know that what I think is right actually  **is** right?”_

_“Because I trusted your judgment.”_

He probably shouldn't have. Natasha kept her regained knowledge to herself, but let James know she was at least aware of their past (that was fair, wasn’t it?).  Part of her (her head or her heart?) had screamed to just turn around and ask him to tell her, tell her of those years, tell her because at least she deserved _that_ much.  She wasn’t sure if wanting to do so was part of pretending she didn’t remember or simply because she wanted to hear _him_ remember.

 

~~(maybe nothing was fair)~~

 

It wasn’t out of anger (though how couldn’t it some part of it be?) that she turned away from him that night. And it wasn’t out of anger (she told herself) that she threw his mistake in his face.  The past was the past, after all, and the past – that sticky tar of a notion that clung to them like sweat between the sheets on a frantic summer night – was something they both desperately needed to leave behind.

 

They needed to move forward now.


	2. Repentance

Moving forward had seemed impossible after that, as if it hadn’t from the start of all this.  The months prior to the warehouse felt hopeful.  But maybe that wasn't the right word.  They had felt _healing_.  Yes, it was the possibility of healing that imbibed the months before Natasha had found out about their past.  Now....

Now things felt like they were back at square one.

 

_"Starting over isn't always a bad thing," Steve said._

 

And Bucky hoped Steve was right (Steve had to be right. Steve was usually right).

 

 

* * *

 

 

Six months gone by.  Bucky took down five AIM complexes with Steve and Sam, helped a reluctant-to-be-helped Matt Murdock out of a snafu involving the Purple Man (and finally got the chance to apologize for trying to murder him), babysat Clint’s half-blind dog _(“Stop calling him _Dog-Fury_ , it’s insulting on about ten levels”)_, and went on a date with a woman named Alyssa that turned sour when some nut-job-of-the-week (Alyssa's husband) tried to shoot him in broad daylight.

 

_“Maybe some other time,”_ she'd said. 

 

There wasn’t another time, he made sure of it (and that was going to be the first and last time he went on a blind date set up by Barton because Kate was right, the guy’s love-life was such a disaster that it affected everyone around him).

 

He ran one mission with Natasha.  Debrief.  Attack.  Accomplish.  Debrief.  Depart.

 

Strictly business.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Nine months passed.  Natasha turned three scientists into SHIELD who were working with modern equivalents of the Red Room, took the anniversary of Yelena’s death off in order to pay her respects and regrets (that was one death Natasha still wasn’t sure how she felt about), babysat Clint’s half-blind dog _(“No, I did not accidentally shoot his eye out with an arrow, Natasha, Jesus Christ”)_ , and ran a mission in Libya with Sharon and Maria.

 

She ran two missions with James.

 

The second ended with small talk over after-battle lunch.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A year and two months after the incident in the warehouse, Bucky found himself grimacing in a dilapidated motel in Chechnya as Natasha dug a bullet out of his good arm.

 

_(“I don’t know why you call your right arm your _‘good’_ arm,”_  Stark had said to him years ago.  _“It’s your left that does the most damage anyway.  Sort of pointless, don't you think?"_

 

_“Too bad it doesn’t do more,”_  Bucky had said, trying to push down bitter thoughts that weren’t supposed to matter now that Steve was alive and well. _"Can't all shoot missiles from our arms, y'know.")_

 

“You have horrible luck when it comes to explosives,” Natasha remarked as she plucked out stray fragments of metal from his flesh.  Her tone was indifferent but Bucky could have sworn there was a fondness in her voice and a smile lurking behind the calm mask she wore.

 

“Tell me about it,” he scoffed.  “I wouldn’t have such bad luck with them if people didn’t keep tryin' to blow me up.”

 

“Where would the fun in that be?” she asked loftily.

 

“S’pose it  _would_  put me out of a job,” he said, drumming metal fingers onto the wooden table beside him to distract from the pain in his other arm.

 

“ _S’pose_ it  _would_  prevent you from making an idiot out of yourself,” she mocked.  Furrowing his brow, Bucky shot her a look only to see a faint smile on her face.  That was new (no, not new;  _recent_ \- it was recent).

 

“Yeah…yeah, it would,” he said slowly, mulling her words over like they were some long lost text that needed to be deciphered, familiar yet different, old yet new.  “You know, I can take care of this on my own, right?”

 

“Oh, I know,” she said, her words sounding like they meant more to her than Bucky realized at face value.  “But what’s the point of having a partner if they don’t help you?”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

James shouldered the butt of the rifle into his shoulder, gazing through the scope and hyper-aware of Natasha crouched beside him, scanning the city below with a pair of Stark Radar Tech binoculars.

 

“The building on your far left, top floor, six meters to the right of the fourth window.  Your guy’s behind that wall,” Natasha said.

 

“…’Tasha?” he asked tentatively, never taking his gaze from the rifle’s scope.

 

“…Hmm?”

 

“You weren’t just told…were you?” he asked.  “About me. About us.”

 

“I’m astonished it only took you over a year to figure it out,” she scoffed, fighting the urge to roll her eyes.

 

Pressing a knob on the scope, he said, “I’m slow on the uptake sometimes.”

 

“I’d say,” Natasha nodded.

 

“Do you forgive me?”

 

His voice was impassive, his words nearly rushed, but Natasha knew him better than that, knew him better than the indifference he was trying to radiate.

 

“I’ve been working on it,” she answered after a while.

 

The brunet was silent for a moment before clearing his throat slightly.  “S’more than I deserve,” he said as he pulled the trigger.

 

“Target down,” Natasha sighed, pressing a button on her communication transmitter.  “We need an extraction at the location indicated.  Over.”  Rubbing a hand through her hair, she looked to James, studying the way he fiddled with the sights of his gun, busying himself in a way that indicated insecurity.

 

“Sometimes we don’t get what we deserve,” she said finally.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It had been painful.  Nothing was more of an obvious statement than that.  It had been painful, but over the past three years he’d learned to live without Natasha.

 

And by doing so, he’d relearned how to live _with_ her.

 

By doing so, they found each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's to hoping this was at least somewhat good?
> 
> Also, I'm aware it could possibly be problematic in places but hey, at least I tried?
> 
> Feedback is appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> If you're confused as to why Rogue played a part into restoring Natasha's memories, it's from when Natasha kissed her in A+X #2.


End file.
